Successes when teaching research:
Breaking assignment into little pieces
Letting students choose topics of interest, immediate relevance
Field research
Capturing enthusiasm of research/learning
I-Search model
Peer support/collaboration
End product is satisfying - "I never thought I could write a paper this long!" - this can be very powerful
Younger kids - we celebrate the product
Focus on the process so kids "get it"
Hurdles teaching research:
Plagiarism - kids don't know they're plagiarising.
Kids don't hear the warnings. Plagiarisim on the rise. Maybe they;re just trying to get by and they know. Unconcerned/unaware of consequences of plag.
Kids can't put the info in their own words.
Kids think they are so savvy about technology that it's hard to teach tech skills other than cut and paste - paraphrasing, etc.
"if someon'e done it why should I?" (When is this legitimate? When not?)
Desperation leads to plagiarism!
Sometimes students can't comprehend the content, so this leads to cutting/pasting.
Students don't have patience coming to the research assignment
Explaining that research is a long process that requires dedication
Giving students the adequate time to go through a genuine process, to revise, go back and forth
Teaching and testing is more time-efficient
Kids lack interest in the topics, we assign the topic (even if we give them some choice within the topic) vs. giving them free choice over research topics.
Difficult to teach them how to evaluate sources
Kids don't understand the resources they should be using
Huge disparity between high school content and college content - the gap is worrisome...our kids can't handle the more academic content
Collecting a lot of information but unfocused around the topic
I-Search - focuses on questions of personal interest, and paper is about the process of doing the research
We show them a linear model and good research isn't linear.
Successes when teaching research:
Breaking assignment into little pieces
Letting students choose topics of interest, immediate relevance
Field research
Capturing enthusiasm of research/learning
I-Search model
Peer support/collaboration
End product is satisfying - "I never thought I could write a paper this long!" - this can be very powerful
Younger kids - we celebrate the product
Focus on the process so kids "get it"
Hurdles teaching research:
Plagiarism - kids don't know they're plagiarising.
Kids don't hear the warnings. Plagiarisim on the rise. Maybe they;re just trying to get by and they know. Unconcerned/unaware of consequences of plag.
Kids can't put the info in their own words.
Kids think they are so savvy about technology that it's hard to teach tech skills other than cut and paste - paraphrasing, etc.
"if someon'e done it why should I?" (When is this legitimate? When not?)
Desperation leads to plagiarism!
Sometimes students can't comprehend the content, so this leads to cutting/pasting.
Students don't have patience coming to the research assignment
Explaining that research is a long process that requires dedication
Giving students the adequate time to go through a genuine process, to revise, go back and forth
Teaching and testing is more time-efficient
Kids lack interest in the topics, we assign the topic (even if we give them some choice within the topic) vs. giving them free choice over research topics.
Difficult to teach them how to evaluate sources
Kids don't understand the resources they should be using
Huge disparity between high school content and college content - the gap is worrisome...our kids can't handle the more academic content
Collecting a lot of information but unfocused around the topic
I-Search - focuses on questions of personal interest, and paper is about the process of doing the research
We show them a linear model and good research isn't linear.